Public Transport Management Bill

PANSY WONG (National) Link to this

Last night we had started to debate the title, which is the Public Transport Management Bill. I suggest that a more appropriate title would be the “Public Deception Bill”. The reason for that is very clear. When the introductory version of this bill was brought back from the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee after a round of consultation, the great majority of the submitters had opted for a tightening of control on public transport and for giving authorities more say in terms of obtaining information from commercial operators, etc. Even the Government stated in the foreword of the bill that it supported that move, instead of going towards the extreme option C, which is that a regional council or authority can remove commercial operators from bus services that do not require a ratepayer or taxpayer subsidy. It was very clear in the introduction to the legislation that adopting that option would undermine business confidence, so we thought it was good that Cabinet had signed off the bill in the form it had when it was introduced to the House and referred to the select committee.

But here we go in the Committee stage, away from the submitters, and the Labour Government is actually backing Supplementary Order Paper 249 in the name of Jeanette Fitzsimons from the Greens to reintroduce option C, which has been rejected by Cabinet and the majority of the submitters. That is incredible. Not only has the Government reintroduced an option that should not be there but also it is trying to rush this bill through under urgency. This legislation could be used to confiscate private property rights. Many bus operators who came before the select committee argued and demonstrated that they have worked long and hard to build up their businesses, but under this last-minute change, the legislation will give regional councils and some public transport planners a free hand to organise and dictate how things should be going.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) Link to this

I will carry on from the very good speech my colleague Pansy Wong made. I guess first of all, for the benefit of the adoring listeners out there who tune in on a regular basis to hear my wonderful oratory, my almost BarackObama - like oratory on this matter, I think it is clear that we should—[ Interruption] We will not go into pigs and lipstick; we will just stay well clear of all of that. That can best be left for another day. What I will run past the adoring listeners and the public out there is just simply what this bill is about and what its title should be. I think that the public who have been listening—and thousands of them were listening last night to this debate—have been confused about what option A, option B, and option C, or what option B+ are. Really, it is simply this. In any one particular jurisdiction—let us take Auckland, for example—there are public transport operators. They may be ferry or rail operations, but in most cases we are talking about bus operations. On some routes on some days and at certain times there are enough patrons of those services for the companies to be able to operate them as straight commercial businesses. They can go out and buy their buses, they can pay for them, they can mark them up in whatever colours they like, they can publish fares and a timetable, and so on, and they can go about their business, just as one would if one was starting a taxi company, a courier company, or whatever. Then there are other services in that same city, on other days, at other times, or on other routes, that simply do not have enough people using them to make any commercial operation viable. But it is clear that those services should be provided in order to try to keep a public transport network going.

The first of those services are called commercial services. They can be run by anybody in the private sector and those operators can make a really good return on their investment—and they do. The others are called contracted services, where the regional council has put in some of its own money and a very big chunk of the Government money coming from the National Land Transport Fund to go out and buy a subsidy. The Government decided that there was too much, I think, funny business going on from some of the bus companies and so on, which were getting too much power in the negotiations and were playing some silly bugger games, and it decided that it was time to give the regional councils a better balance about how they could negotiate those services. The Government, quite properly, set about consulting and negotiating with the various people in the industry. It negotiated with the Bus and Coach Association, which is the representative body of the bus and coach industry, and with a number of other players. Those players all reported to me at the time that they thought the talks had gone well, the consultation had gone well, and that everybody had come to an agreed position called option B.

Option B was the halfway house. It is the old George Gair line: if one is given two solutions, one always goes for the one in the middle. So option B” was that one in the middle that would be a compromise by all parties. Everyone could live with it. The bus companies were a bit upset, as they thought that it went too far, and I think that the Government thought that it had about the right balance, and everyone said that they could live with it. If we look at the Cabinet paper from February 2007, we see that it lays out a whole series of decisions that one could easily map with one-to-one mapping, using isomorphic mapping on a one-to-one basis, to show what option B was. It was a great Cabinet minute, and when the industry saw that Cabinet minute come out, it was pleased.

In the introductory copy of the bill when it was finally introduced to Parliament, the Minister’s own foreword stated that the Government had looked at option C, but it had ruled it out as being unworkable. It is not the National Party’s view; this is what the Minister stated in the foreword and in the records of this Parliament. And we agreed. But what the bus and coach people were then quite concerned about was the legislation that they had before them did not do quite a one-to-one mapping of option B. It was sort of an option B on steroids. It had a bit more added in a few little places, which made quite a difference. So during the course of the select committee hearing, we went through, I think, a process of trying to bring that legislation back and getting it to line up.

The title of the bill, the Public Transport Management Bill, should now, quite rightly, I think, be the “Public Deception Management Bill”. Those people were told: “This is what you will get.” The Minister’s foreword to the bill said that the Government rejects option C. Then, out of the blue, something really, really interesting happened. We found that New Zealand Bus Ltd had got a very, very highly qualified lawyer in the form of Professor Taggart. We found that Professor Taggart had gone to the Regulations Review Committee and raised some quite serious concerns. The Legislative Advisory Committee, which is headed by Geoffrey Palmer, had raised those same concerns about Parliament and its delegation of powers down to a body underneath the level of Parliament. What we did not know at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee as we considered this bill, was that the Regulations Review Committee, when it heard that advice, had some serious concerns about it, so much so that that multiparty committee decided to write to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and point out the areas of the bill it had some serious concerns about and wanted addressed. As I have said during the debate on earlier parts of this bill, if that advice had simply been “tick the box” stuff, “remove clause C, add clause D, take out clause E”, then I guess we would not have needed to have any consideration of it because it would have been a case of following the dots and doing it. But part of the advice was that the committee should give consideration to how it would best manage it. It was a very wide and open brief to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee about what its members should do to tidy up the legislation. I repeat that. It was not “tick the box, follow the dots” stuff. It was a more wide-ranging brief that needed some consideration.

It turned out—it was somebody’s fault; I do know whose fault it was, and I do not think we will ever know—that that letter from the Regulations Review Committee never got to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. So while we did the whole consideration and deliberation process on the bill we were blissfully unaware of that issue. Only after the committee had completed its consideration and then its deliberation, and reported the bill back to this House, did it become clear that something was wrong. So the National Party did, I think, what is the only logical thing that should have happened to this bill—and a lot of anger has been created because it did not happen—and that was say that the bill should come back to the committee. It was not the Minister’s fault or the Government’s fault. Somebody in the bureaucracy had screwed up. The committee should have been given a chance to take account of that advice, incorporate it into the bill, and bring the bill back to the House. I know that Labour members then got into a tailspin because they were running out of time and did not know how many more parliamentary days they had. I said I would give them a watertight commitment. I want the Minister to ask the chairperson of that committee, if she wants to, whether we have ever reneged on any commitment we have ever given. We have stuck to our word—watertight. We said: “Bring that bill back for 1 day—

SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) Link to this

I rise to support my most excellent colleague Maurice Williamson and I totally agree that the bill should be called the “Public Deception Transport Bill”. It is being rushed through under urgency, which is extraordinary, but we need look only at the purpose of the bill to understand why. The purpose of this bill epitomises the way in which this Government likes to operate, and that is about absolute power and control that is tantamount to a dictatorship. That is what the purpose espouses by conferring on regional councils powers to set standards for commercial and public transport, to provide for regulation and registration, and to help regional councils and the agency obtain the best value for money in achieving affordable, integrated, safe, responsive, etc., public transport. But, essentially, it screws the scrum.

This is not an equal situation where people sit down and negotiate the best outcome. This is a contractor situation where the regional council can virtually dictate what it expects, and then it is up to a transport provider as to whether it wants to enter into that agreement with the regional council. Why would it? We will not get people stepping up to the plate and wanting to support regional councils if they are going to try to take advantage of this legislation to have a much more powerful position in the contract negotiations. That is what this bill is all about. This is the sort of legislation that epitomises this current Government. It does not do its homework, and that has been quite clearly espoused by Maurice Williamson. He has shown quite clearly that the Government has failed to do the proper work and the proper analysis to get the best outcomes for all those involved, and particularly for the people who are trying to be best served by a public transport system.

The Government continues to fail the people of New Zealand, and further, poor legislation like this is just a constant glaring example of the Government’s failure to do its legislation correctly. We have only to look at the bill to see all of the changes that have been made, and then we can look at the two Supplementary Order Papers, which are quite substantial as well. That completely underscores what Maurice Williamson has been saying. The Government has not been doing its homework. It should have gone back and taken the opportunity to address the bill, particularly when it did not get a letter sent to it from the Regulations Review Committee. The Government had the opportunity to go back and address the bill, in light of that letter coming to the fore, but it did not take that opportunity. There can be no more glaring example of the Government’s failure to uphold the democratic principles that we want to see espoused in this Parliament.

This happens time and time again in legislation. There is poor problem definition, which means that the Government does not come up with the correct solutions to deal with those problems and we get convoluted legislation, which the Government just does not understand the ramifications of. Another glaring example, I have to say, is the Electoral Finance Act and that has been declared unworkable.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this

It is an interesting day when we are discussing legislation in regard to public transport. If we look at the history of this legislation and at some of the other issues that are going through the Parliament at this time, we see they have a very similar background of corporate involvement in decision making beyond what we would expect the parliamentary process to engage in.

In this case, we had an agreement between the major parties involved in the issue. The public transport providers—in essence, the bus companies—the major regional provider, the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, and other regions were involved. The Government of the day had made a purely commercial decision, as one would expect, in the sense that it was agreeable to all the parties involved. That decision was never followed through, even though it got Cabinet approval. The Minister may like to deny that and say it was subject to some kind of formality, through the consultation of the parliamentary process, but that is not the reality. The parties involved understood that they had a commercial decision, and that was the expectation of everyone involved. Then, when it comes to the reality of passing the legislation through this House, the Government has changed its mind and goes against that commercial decision and does what it thinks is expedient, to satisfy its supporters.

That is very much the theory of what we are seeing in the Winston Peters saga, as well. It just shows the whole nature of this Government, that it cannot be trusted on its word. It will go against the people it has made agreements with in the past, it will do what it feels is right at one particular time to achieve political advantage, and it has no concept of what the public wants. It is not governing in the interests of what is best for New Zealand. The parallels between this bill and what we are seeing in the Winston Peters saga are very similar.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) Link to this

I move, That the question be now put.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) Link to this

I will complete my comments with regard to how the Public Transport Management Bill actually got to where it is at. As this bill came back to the House and we then began the Committee stage, the whole breach of process along the way has become clear.

The Government puts great store on consulting. It had consulted widely and had got to an agreed position, but the bill that is currently in the Committee is not anything like that.

TIM BARNETT (Senior Whip—Labour) Link to this

I move, That the question be now put.

Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) Link to this

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have the Order Paper from Wednesday, 10 September. If there is a new Order Paper out, I would like to see a copy of it. I have not seen it—it has not been made available to us—but there may be one. On the Order Paper I have, after the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill and the Electricity (Renewable Preference) Amendment Bill, there is the Public Transport Management Bill, Committee stage only, and then the Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill. I do not know how members are supposed to function in a House with an Order Paper that is supposed to tell us what the order of legislation is but does not. The third reading of the Public Transport Management Bill is not listed on this Order Paper, nor has there been an Order Paper printed for us to see a change. I would really like to know how that process works.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) Link to this

I realise the member is a relatively new member, but the motion moved last night was for urgency to include the remaining stages of this bill. It is a motion that has been moved in that form in this Parliament, I think one could say, since time immemorial, and it enables the House to move from the Committee stage to the third reading. That is the effect of urgency, apart from extended sitting times.